I am available to work with all students, undergraduate and graduate. I can advise students who have taken at least TWO university courses in American literature and/or culture. Some background in US history is also needed.

ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS are available here: https://www.lingue.unito.it/do/home.pl/View?doc=/laurearsi/tesi_e_laurea.html

UNDERGRADUATE (trennali) THESES
A BA (triennale) thesis is structured as a commentary (approx 30 pages + bibliography and introduction) on a significant text of American Literature. Candidates can choose any title from my ongoing list, provided they have not already studied that text for a previous university exam.

Students will purchase the primary text(s), in English, and study it/them thoroughly. They will also purchase and study Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative.

Furthermore, they will research and analyze any secondary materials useful to compile the commentary.

If interested in writing an undergraduate thesis under my supervision, make sure your qualify (see top of this page) and email me for a preliminay consultation.

Students writing UNDERGRADUATE THESES, should read this first:
http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/honors-theses/

GRADUATE (magistrali) THESES
I accept any theses that fall within my areas of expertise (please check my “publications” link BEFORE proposing a thesis topic). Before starting a thesis project, students must have read Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative

Students writing GRADUATE THESES, should read this first: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/tat/pdfs/dissertation.pdf

A thesis (undergraduate or graduate) may be written either in Italian OR in English: we will seek the best option for each student, based on a careful assessment of their language strengths.

Although the time of completion for a thesis depends exclusively on the student’s pace of work and his/her initial competence in academic research and writing, please understand that preparing an undergraduate thesis requires AT LEAST 6 months of ACTUAL work (this does not include preliminary consultations or time spent doing other things such as exams and other academic or personal pursuits). 

In a typical (and regrettable) scenario, students approach me for a thesis, receive approval on a topic (STEP 1), and then DISAPPEAR for months. They then reappear (STEP 2), informing me that they "must" graduate within 2 or 3 months. This scenario is always the source of disappointment for students, after I let them know that that long hiatus when they have not worked on their theses beteen steps 1 and 2 DOES NOT COUNT towards the 6 months minimum, and that there is no way that a thesis can be written in two months. This is a frustrating experience for all, and I write this to try to prevent you from falling into that misundertanding: six months (minimum) of thesis work means UNINTERRUPTED DEDICATION to your thesis for 6 months, with monthly meetings with me where you bring in each time the results of your ongoing research. Also remember that time is not measured as prior to your thesis defense (discussione), but as prior to the deadline for official delibery (usually 1 to 2 monts before defense).

Students should make plans for their thesis well in advance of their desired graduation date. While considering the timing involved, students should bear in mind that:

1. The date of your prospective defense session (data della discussione) and your thesis turn-in deadline (data consegna tesi) are different. What matters is the latter, and not the former. Therefore, if you plan – for instance – to graduate in November, turn-in deadline is usually end of September: this is the deadline by which your thesis needs to be 100% finished!

2. I request that a full, finished copy of a thesis be submitted to me for approval no later than 14 days prior to the official turn-in deadline (see above).

3. Before that, students will have submitted and discussed their work CHAPTER BY CHAPTER, one chapter at a time. It takes NO LESS THAN ONE MONTH to write up one thesis chapter. Early chapters are often re-written one or more times before they are acceptable for final submission.

4. After all chapters are written, an introduction and abstract are written. This takes NO LESS THAN 7-10 days, sometimes longer.

5. Before you begin writing, you will need to submit a PROPOSAL (see next section). This preliminary stage also is time-consuming, requiring lots of reading and a few meetings with me, therefore adding up to the final duration of your thesis effort.

While planning your thesis work, bear all of the above in mind, and gauge it against your weaknesses and strengths as a student and a writer, as well as against with your upcoming commitments. This will avoid misunderstandings and frustration on both parts.

AS WE START A THESIS PROJECT TOGETHER, I WILL ASK YOU TO EXPLICITLY CONFIRM THAT YOU HAVE READ AND UNDERSTOOD THIS SECTION OF MY THESIS INFO.

Since the introduction of generative AI in the fall of 2022, the thesis writing process has never been the same as before. As more and more students turn to AI for support (at times as replacement) in their writing process, it has become very hard to assess and grade students' writing, as oftentimes instructors end up grading the work of a text generating machine rather than that of students.

What most students do not realize is that generative AI currently has TWO major problems in writing academic theses:
1.  because it replaces  student work,  it produces outcomes that by definition cannot be credited to the student and therefore cannot be made to count towards the student's achievement of her/his degree
2. it produces writing that does not correspond to what is required for a thesis.

Behind a linguistic form that is spotless for grammar, syntax and register used, AI-generated theses are a. descriptive rather than argumentative; b. very GENERIC in content; c. never engaging in the in-depth textual reading which lies at the core of a good thesis in literary and cultura studies; d. relying mostly on common knowledge, of the type found in open access knowledge repositories such as Wikipedia, on which these language models are trained; e. rarely tapping the specialized literature in literary and cultural studies pertinent to our field of research, which is often copyrighted and beyond the reach of AI's training models.

And although it would be pointless to demonize AI - which would amount to demonizing the future - everyone needs to understand that undergraduate or graduate theses are meaningful ONLY if they are the outcome of human - not machine - work. Theses are supposed to develop a student's independent study, research and writing skills, in the belief that these skills will be valuable in their professional lives. As we await guidance from academic authorities on how to integrate AI in our daily practices, we need to make sure that at this time no AI equivalent replaces the human mind in the production of academic research (which also includes thesis work). Moreover, we need to ensure that the theses that students produce remain the work of humans and not machines, and that the credits awarded as a consequence are earned by the students, and not by technological devices. There is obviously nothing wrong in using AI assistance for spell-checking or improving the overall form of your written presentation. There is a MAJOR PROBLEM if you use AI to do your research work (e.g. reading, summarizing and analyzing sources, finding references and citations on your behalf). There is, likewise, a MAJOR PROBLEM if you ask AI do do your writing for you!!!  Simply stated: There is NO PROBLEM if you use AI as an assistant that will CHECK and provide feedback on the things you have done. There is a MAJOR PROBLEM if you ask AI do those things on your behalf!!!

As things currently stand, a thesis remains the result of 1. individual research as articulated in the "research process" section of this blog, involving the independent  and active use of LIBRARIES and JOURNAL REPOSITORIES and the first hand reading and study of BOOKS, ESSAYS and related research resources; 2. personal elaboration of the information retrieved; 3. individual planning of the writing process (table of contents, work plan, etc.); 4. individual writing of the results obtained in what we currently define a "thesis". By "first-person" and "personal" I mean to say that these tasks are executed the student, not by machines (nor other humans). 

I WILL THEREFORE TREAT AS A SERIOUS ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT any use of AI in a thesis that is not EXPLICITLY ACKNOWLEDGED. Moreover, I WILL NOT APPROVE  theses that have been over-reliant of AI (more than 15% of their overall generative content - this does NOT include the "no problem" use of AI I have outlined above, as long as it is EXPLICITLY ACKNOWLEDGED). Failure to acknowledge in detail (see below) your use of AI in a thesis will result in my immediate withdrawal as your thesis advisor, meaning that I will not accept your thesis on the uniTO platform and you will not be able to graduate with this thesis. I am VERY SERIOUS ABOUT THIS.

How to acknowledge any use of AI in your thesis:
- At the START of each chapter, you will write a paragraph detailing which parts of that paragraph have benefited from AI, both in the RESEARCH as well as in the WRITING and REVISION process. You will need to be VERY SPECIFIC. Here is a template (fell free to change and adapt as needed):
"In this chapter, I have used [name any relevant AI platforms] in the following pages and paragraphs:
- page 1, 2nd and 3rd paragraph: these chapters were written by AI
- pages 3-6: I have used AI to rewrite pages that I originally wrote
- references to the works of [author] and [author], as well as the summaries of heir contents that I have included, were provided by AI
- etc.

- Moreover, I have used AI for the compilation of this thesis in the following ways: [explain in detail]

PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT I AM VERY SERIOUS ABOUT ALL I HAVE WRITTEN ABOVE. If you are not sure that you can work with these requirements, please do not ask me to be your thesis advisor, which would result in significant time loss for both of us.

ALL Thesis students MUST be familiar with authoritative reseach resources, such as major American Studies JOURNALS and PUBLICATIONS, ONLINE PLATFORMS (JStor, Project Muse, GoogleBooks), DATABANKS and LIBRARY CATALOGS and RESOURCES (WorldCat, trova@unito, unito's library catalog) and RESEACH AGGREGATORS (e.g. Google Scholar) . If you have not read the contents at his link, you are not ready to start a thesis.

Once you and I agree on a viable topic for your thesis, it is time for you to prepare a THESIS PROPOSAL for my approval. A thesis proposal is a word document containing a detailed run-down of your thesis project, one that will allow me to understand if you have a workable sequance for your presentation as well as a usable bibliography.

A thesis proposal will contain the following elements:

• your name

• date

• your thesis tentative title

• a 2-page description of your project (what is your topic? what is your primary text? what are your key secondary texts? what is is that you intend to study in your primary text? what does each of the secondary texts bring to your research? how do you plan to structure your work? what will each of the chaters forcus on? etc.)

• a working bibliography

Your proposal will tell how well you have RESEARCHED your topic (see above) and how ready you are to start compiling your manuscript (see below).

PLEASE NOTICE: ANY FILES THAT YOU SEND ME MUST BE NAMED BEGINING WITH YOUR LAST NAME, FOLLOWED BY A REFERENCE TO THE CONTENTS OF THE FILE AND CURRENT DATE (ex. "Rossi - Faulkner thesis, chapter 1, 30.1.2024")

WHAT IS A THESIS?

A thesis is a WRITING EXERCISE where students circulate the results of a RESEARCH PROJECT (i.e. the study of one or more primary texts and related authoritative scholarly sources) through an ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT. 

Therefore, constant and detailed references to your sources lies at the core of your thesis. As a rule of thumb, each paragraph must explicitly reference (via notes-in-text, see below) at least one scholarly source (not ANY source: acceptable sources are EXCLUSIVELY published academic books and research papers). Any paragraphs in your thesis lacking references to sources do not qualify as academic research, and are therefore beyond the scope of a thesis. Referenced sources are then assembled into a final bibliography, which must be compiled by following very carefully the Chicago style format (see below, "manuscript preparation" section).

If you have never seen or read a thesis before, here is an excerpt from a very good Am. Studies original thesis.

You may also wish to check out the unito online thesis archive, especially to see what theses I have directed over the years.

MANUSTRIPT PREPARATION RESOURCES

Make sure you read and FULLY UNDERSTAND the manuscript preparation specifications below..

MANUSCRIPT FORMATTING SPECS (opens pdf file)

NOTES-IN-TEXT, FOOTNOTES, AND BIBLIOGRAPHY (opens external link). We use notes-in-text citation and Chicago style 15a with author-date references. This link clarifies what this means. PLEASE NOTICE: Make sure you click on the “author-date” tab: these are the specs we use.

SAMPLE PAPER (opens external link). Your finished paper should approximately look like this. However, this paper uses the MLA style for bibliography, which is slightly different from Chicago.

Students submit theses ONE CHAPTER AT A TIME. Each chapter is sent to me via email in doc of docx format. Each document must contain:
1. your full name
2. Thesis title (or working title)
3. FULL table of contents
4. Full text of your chapter, with relevant tile and subtitles.
5. Full bibliograhy

Once I receive your chapter, I read it within approximately 7-10 days and then meet with you for feedback.

You may need to revise/rewrite, after which a new meeting will be necessary. The more revisions, the more meetings, and the more time it will take (for both parties!) to complete your thesis. Hence, it is crucial that your first submissions be FINAL.

Chapters are compiled according to the “Manuscript Formatting Specs” in the pdf file linked above. Non-compliant submissions are returned to the sender for revision, with precious time lost.

After submitting you will receive an email from me, with an appointment to discuss your chapter (approx 7-10 days later, not including offical holidays), or a request to resubmit.

Please understand that non-compliant chapters (i.e. chapters that are not formatted according to the specifications above or are missing key parts) are sent back to you for revision, which delays progress of your thesis and may cause you to miss a graduation session. I can be held in no way responsible for such delays.